


Slipped

by WaferBiscuits



Category: Lupin III
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Gunshot Wounds, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Self-Indulgent, Supportive Gang Vibes, Tenderness, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:40:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25529089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WaferBiscuits/pseuds/WaferBiscuits
Summary: Lupin is gravely injured following a botched job. Jigen is there to keep him afloat.
Relationships: Jigen Daisuke/Arsène Lupin III
Comments: 12
Kudos: 84





	1. Part I

Lupin had never been able to dream when he slept. Not that it mattered. 

He hadn’t slept in days since the bank job. 

He lay naked on top of the sticky comforter – a scratchy fake satin thing with blotches of century-old stains. His hands clenched at them, sweating hard enough to wet the fabric into a gummy pulp.

His eyes were clenched tight. His breath exploded in puffed whistles of exertion.

White hot fire of pain. Cascading. Rolling. The craters of gunshots puckered in skin that expanded and contracted with each breath. 

“Easy, Lu, easy,” a voice rumbling from above. A warm, dry hand pressing on Lupin’s face. The shell of Lupin’s ear cradled like a precious thing. 

Oh, Daisuke. Bless his heart. 

Lupin tried to breathe deep. The pain of it made him dizzy. Broken ribs?

He tried to speak, but could only manage a hollow whisper. His brain sizzled.

With Jigen, he always spoke in English. It was easiest for both of them. But he couldn’t find the words. For now, English was tucked away in an impregnable vault. 

“Où suis-je?” 

Jigen’s hand migrated to Lupin’s forehead, feeling the molten skin. “We’re in the safe house. Goemon’s on lookout. Fujiko went to nick some drugs for you. One of your wounds is infected.” 

Under the fog of hurt, Lupin felt his eyelids peel open. 

The world looked back at him, fuzzy. A dark blob of a figure loomed over him, distinctly furry. A map of indistinct facial features hugged by a familiar nest of hair and pointed beard. 

“There you are.” Jigen’s voice wrenched Lupin from the precipice of delirium, deep and grounding. The hand on his sweating forehead went back to his cheek, a firm caress. His fingers pressed into his flushed skin. 

Lupin remembered slipping from a window. It had been a sheet of ice lingering on the sill he hadn’t seen in the flurry of the chase. If it hadn’t been there, if he hadn’t slipped, he would have leapt from the window to a waiting rope that had trailed down from Fujiko’s helicopter. 

He would have clung the rope, swung around, and waved goodbye at the pursuing security guards with all of the flamboyant, boyish charm he could muster up. Abayo.

Instead, he flailed forward and careened over the edge. He remembered the stab of horror. He remembered reaching for his breast pocket to activate an emergency parachute. 

And then, a thunderclap. Another. Then several more. 

An intrepid cop from the root of the building shot at Lupin’s body with as many slugs as he could fire. Some of them connected. Most didn’t. Windowpanes crackled into dust all around his target. 

The last bit Lupin remembered was pressing the parachute button underneath a cacophony of glass, screams, and gunfire. 

And now, silence. No, that wasn’t true. There was the buzz of the AC unit. His own breath in high-pitched whistles. 

The picture was clearer now. Lupin could make out Jigen’s eyes, liquid brown glinting under his bangs. His expression was masked, much to Lupin’s annoyance. He had known this man for thirty years. He knew when he was hiding something.

Somewhere in a corner of his brain, Lupin found English. “How bad is it?” he whispered. Anything louder would have made the pain worse.

He watched Jigen visibly hesitate. “Uh…”

“Don’t you dare even try to lie to me, Daisuke. I swear to god.” 

“Fine.” Jigen’s shoulders slumped. “Well, it’s not great. You were out cold for two days. You got shot four times while you were falling, and the parachute opened too late. Your right arm and leg broke when you hit the ground.” 

Lupin didn’t say anything. The shock of it made the fog start to creep back. He wanted to push it away. Keep lucid. Don’t close your eyes, Arsene. Keep awake.

From his bedside perch, Jigen reached for the nightstand and took a glass. He shifted his position and gently took the back of Lupin’s head, lifting him. 

“You need to drink something, okay?” He held the rim of the glass to Lupin’s cracked lips, tilting slowly. 

The water was lukewarm and stale. It tasted awful, as bad as the city water in Paris. Lupin forced himself to swallow two mouthfuls before screwing his eyes and mouth shut.

Jigen nodded and took the glass away. “Good, that’s really good.” 

The praise made Lupin feel warm. Safe. He felt his eyes start to close.

Something cold was brought to his lips and pressed down. Lupin watched Jigen swipe a stick of lip balm from one corner of his mouth to the other.

“Smack for me, Lu.” 

From a far-off plane, absently, Lupin felt himself try and fail. 

God, he was so tired. 

Jigen capped the balm and took his thumb to Lupin’s lower lip. He spread the gloss evenly. “There you go,” he mumbled. 

God, he is such a mother hen. 

For some reason, Lupin felt himself start to cry. He didn’t know why. The tears beaded his eyes and streamed down, pooling in the hollows of his neck. 

“It’s okay.” Jigen held his hand. Pet the peach fuzz of his hair. “It’s okay. You’ll be okay.” 

He cried harder. The sobs ripped at his chest. He couldn’t help it. It was so stupid. Pathetic. He wanted a cigarette so bad. 

“I’ve got you, Lu.” Jigen moved to take a tissue and dab at Lupin’s cheeks. “Try and sleep, yeah? I’ll get you awake when Fujiko gets back.” 

Lupin didn’t reply. The sobs faded to childish hiccups. His eyes were shut. He felt drained. He wanted to say something, anything. He couldn’t find the right words in any language. 

He must have fallen asleep. He didn’t dream.


	2. Part II

Jigen always felt a strange, out of body feeling when he smelled real butter. Margarine and vegetable oil were usually what defined his wealth, watery salty grease that made his cookery smell sour for days. 

But butter? Real, unsalted stuff? That was gold – Ft. Knox quality. The kind of thing that awakened long-dead memories of being small and watching his son of a bitch father squint over a rickety stove, slurring “this is as good as you’ll ever get, you little shit.”

Jigen always washed his hands before cooking, but not for the sanitation of it. He just always thought he saw flecks of crusty blood stuck between his fingers. 

He dried his hands on a cotton towel, another thing that was hard to get used to. 

Jigen’s life had always been defined by its ups and downs, the royal flush of a successful heist eternally coupled with weeks of bitter hunger and homemade liquor once the money ran out. He was used to not taking luxuries for granted. Like men, they came and went out of his life.

His sleeves were rolled up and his jacket hung over a chair. The butter lay on the counter-top and stared back at him. He had found it long-forgotten inside an otherwise empty fridge. 

After all, this wasn’t their home. Their safe house, yes, but not their home.

Jigen rummaged through the drawers and found a water spotted knife. In a walnut cabinet, he found a skillet. 

He heard a quiet moan from down the hall. He froze and waited to hear if his name would be called. 

Ten seconds. Twenty. Nothing.

Jigen had never wanted a drink more in his life. Too bad he had already drunk the half-full bottle of cooking sherry that was here. It tasted awful and it didn’t even get him buzzed. Rip-off. 

The knife slipped through the butter with no fuss. Jigen cut away three squares and wrapped the rest in the wax it came in. 

Now he just needed to figure out what to cook with it. 

Another moan. Jigen stopped. Waited.

Nothing. 

He started looking through the cabinets again. Too bad the pharmacy didn’t have food along with the gabapentin and tramadol Fujiko was out swiping. 

A single dusty box of rigatoni stared back at him from the dark corner of a cabinet nook. He grabbed it and eyed the expiration date. 

The front door creaked open. Jigen palmed his gun. 

“It’s me.” Goemon stepped inside. He glanced at the pasta box and frowned. “Is that all that’s left?” 

Jigen shrugged. “Can’t be choosy right now, unless you wanna go plain clothes and go out yourself.” 

“I’ll pass.”

“Tch.”

Balancing his sword at his side, Goemon eased himself on the floor cross-legged. He kept an ear turned toward the front door that way. “How is Lupin?” he asked. 

Jigen cranked the stove’s knob and watched the burner click to life. “Not good at all, and if Fujiko doesn’t get back in the next hour I’m gonna go out myself and just assume she cut loose.” 

Goemon closed his eyes. He expression was, as always, infuriatingly neutral. “I think you may be letting your personal bias against her cloud your perception.” 

“Tch!” Jigen took the pan and ran it under the sink, filling it half-way with water. “Yeah, well, let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised if she took the opportunity to leave while we’re all hot.”

“Their relationship is too symbiotic for her to want Lupin to perish. There is too much at stake,” said Goemon. 

Jigen set the pan on the burner and watched the flames lap at the bottom. “I hate it when you get all zen on me, man.” He reached for his breast pocket for a cigarette and felt for the carton. It was empty. “Ah, shit.” 

Goemon cracked open an eye. “You needed to quit anyway.” 

“I didn’t ask for the peanut gallery.” Jigen took the butter slices and plopped them in the water. If he had any salt, he would have put some of that in too. 

When you’re cooking pasta, salt your water like the ocean – that was what his dad had always said, usually before kicking him out to buy cigarettes. 

He watched the butter dissolve at the edges and cloud the water. He sighed. 

“You have lost weight,” said Goemon. 

“Lupin’s lost more. I don’t know how I’m gonna get him to eat anything if I can’t even get him to drink.” Jigen leaned at the counter and took off his hat. He ran a hand through his hair and looked toward the ceiling. “I guess pasta is soft enough, but maybe I could mash it or something…” 

“Jigen.” Goemon stood. He went to Jigen and placed a firm hand on the gunman’s shoulder. “You need to care for yourself as well, for everyone’s sake.” 

Jigen stiffened under the touch. He couldn’t look Goemon in the eye. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.” 

From down the hall, Lupin cried out. 

Jigen waited to hear for his name.

Nothing. 

Goemon gently squeezed Jigen’s shoulder, letting his hand trail down his arm. “I am concerned for you as well, that is all I am saying.” 

Jigen dared to look up at Goemon’s face and almost winced at how earnestly the samurai looked back at him. “I, uh, appreciate it.” 

“I am sure that if Lupin were in a more lucid state of mind, he would not want to see you eating yourself away for his sake.” Goemon moved back and readjusted his grip on his sword. “I’ll go back out now.”

The water was boiling.

“Want some pasta?” asked Jigen.

“No, thank you.” 

Goemon left without another word, the front door creaking shut behind him.

Ripping open the pasta box, Jigen poured in the noodles and cranked the heat to a low simmer. He used the knife to stir it together. 

For some reason, he felt more tired than ever. Spending his emotions on more than one person at a time made him weary. 

He looked out the kitchen window at a line of pine trees and forest scrub that looked back at him. The safe house was in the middle of bum fuck nowhere, thankfully. Probably some rich family’s holiday retreat.

The sun was starting to go down. Jigen hoped that Fujiko would come back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Felt like adding to it - will probably add more. Thank you for reading! It warms my heart ;o;


	3. III

Lupin drifted through unconsciousness. His sleep was an inky black sea chopped with waves of discomfort. 

Something hard and oblong was being pressed against his lips.

He felt himself rise back to the ocean’s surface. He heard a voice that sounded like static.

“Come on, lover, I went to a lot of trouble to get this crap for you. I’m going to feel real hurt if you don’t take it.”

Fujicakes, huh? 

He felt her thin fingers curl up his lips and pop a sugar-coated pill against his clamped down teeth. 

“Open your mouth, sweetie, come on.”

Lupin couldn’t do it. He didn’t know why. His jaw felt frozen shut. 

He opened his eyes. Fujiko looked back at him, her face inches from his own, and looking more and more frustrated.

The pill was beginning to soften. Lupin could taste the sugar as it leeched through his teeth. It made him feel nauseous.

“Fucking Hell, you’re not doing it right!” Jigen’s voice erupted, loud enough to make Lupin wince.

He watched Jigen cross into his view and all but shove Fujiko away. She huffed and stepped back, the tablet left to hang loose in Lupin’s mouth. 

“And what do you call ‘doing it right’, huh, Jigen?” Fujiko pointed towards Lupin. “Is ‘doing it right’ splinting his arm and leg with coat hangers, or is it realizing that you’re in way over your head, and that he needs to go to a hospital?”

“Don’t be stupid.” Jigen’s voice was clipped. 

Lupin watched, completely passive, as Jigen leaned close to his face to pluck the tablet from his lips. He set it aside, and moved back to cup Lupin’s cheek. His callused thumb stroked along his cheekbone. 

“I’m not the one who’s being stupid here,” Fujiko said. She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. “If we take him to a hospital, sure, he’ll get arrested, but that would only be after he got some actual treatment. Then he’d just break himself out of whatever cell they’d toss him in.” 

Jigen’s frown deepened. “It’s not that simple. No, we’re not doing that. We’ve never needed to do it before and we don’t need to now.”

Lupin watched them with a glazed-over stare. He felt his eyelids droop. Weird, he had been having so much trouble getting to sleep before. Now he couldn’t seem to keep awake.

Fujiko scoffed. “Yeah? And how has that attitude been treating that tooth of yours?”

“Can it.”

Lupin closed his eyes. 

“Jigen, you’re being stubborn in the worst possible way right now. I hope you know that.” 

“I’m not having this conversation with you.”

God, just stop it already. Please.

Lupin felt the familiar ache start to gnaw the edges of his skin. 

He heard a rattling sound, a container being popped open. Jigen muttering “god, these are freaking horse pills!” 

“It’s ciprofloxacin,” Fujiko piped in. “If you can only get him to take one, make it be that one.”

Large warm hands enclosed Lupin’s cheeks. Lupin peeled open his eyes and folded into the touch. 

Jigen looked back at him with an encouraging smile, the picture of devotion. For some reason, it made tears bead the corners of Lupin’s eyes. 

“Come on, buddy,” Jigen murmured. Using the pads of his thumbs, he began to massage Lupin’s jaw, digging deep into the taut bundles of muscle below his ears. “Just relax for me, okay?”

Lupin felt himself slacken, teeth unclenching. He found words, even if they weren’t the right ones. They were just the ones he knew best.

“Je suis désolé,” he whispered, his own voice sounded metallically harsh in his ears.

“Hey, none of that,” Jigen chided, clicking his tongue. He kept massaging in rhythmic circles. “Do you wanna try dry swallowing this? Or would water help better?”   
“L’eau.”

Jigen paused, frowning. “I don’t know what that one means, bud.”

“He said he wanted water.” Fujiko straightened up and smoothed her hands over her blouse. “I’ll go get a fresh glass.” 

Her heels clicked against the hardwood. As her steps faded, Jigen leaned in and kissed Lupin’s sweating forehead. “I made some pasta. Would you be up to trying some?” he asked, breathing against his skin.

All the while, his thumbs kept working at Lupin’s jaw. 

Lupin took few moments to think. He let his brain slowly churn out a translation before croaking “maybe. I can try.”

“Atta boy.” Jigen grinned. 

Lupin could tell it was forced. 

Fujiko melted back into the room. She handed a glass to Jigen. “Here.”

Jigen didn’t thank her. He took it and as well as a single pill. “Y’know, we wouldn’t even be having this problem if you had thought to get the liquid syrup type stuff instead of these things.” 

“It’s Cipro, Jigen! It doesn’t come any other way!” Fujiko threw up her hands, outwardly fuming. “Except intravenously! But I guess since you’re too busy playing nurse we can’t do that, huh?”

“Are you done?” Jigen snapped. He didn’t even look back at her, instead focusing on lifting Lupin’s head to raise the glass to his lips. “Because if you are, you can make yourself useful by getting food for Goemon or something.” 

Lupin wanted to say something, to either apologize on Jigen’s behalf (it wouldn’t have been the first time) or to thank her for getting medicine. Ideally both. 

But before he could do so, the rim of a glass was tipped towards him. Jigen hovered overhead, tablet in-hand. 

Heels click clacked away. Fujiko had left without a word. She slammed the door behind her. 

Jigen immediately relaxed. His shoulders lowered. He breathed a long, heavy sigh. “At least she didn’t cut and run.” The glass trembled in his hand. “Almost wish she had.”

Lupin tried to meet his eyes as he forced himself to take a drink. The water tasted as awful as it did before, but at least it was cold this time. 

The faster he could stomach a pill, the faster he could speak. 

“You got enough?” Jigen asked. He pulled the drink away as Lupin screwed up his face. “Alright, here.” 

Stifling a gag, Lupin took the offered pill and swallowed. The fog was coming back in. He pushed it away.

But god, did his broken arm and leg throb, like they were being clawed at from the inside. 

He forced himself back to the present, forced himself took at his partner in the eye and manage a hoarse whisper. “She’s only trying to help, you know.”

Jigen sniffed. “Only because it suits what she wants, at least for right now.” He moved to idly run a hand through Lupin’s too-short hair. 

“If you really love me, you’ll apologize.” Under a blanket of pain, Lupin managed an impish smile. 

“You’re pushing it, but fine.” Jigen tugged his hat over his brow, smiling faintly. “You twisted my arm, no offense.”

Lupin would have laughed if he had the energy. Instead, he began drifting back to the depths, regarding Jigen with a lazy, half-lidded look. “I wanna smoke,” he mumbled, “can I have one?”

“No fresh ones, but if you want I can go get some of the butts in the Fiat’s tray. How’s that sound?” 

“Ducky,” Lupin slurred, eyes closed. 

He heard Jigen chuckle above him. Felt his hair stroked, another kiss to his temple. 

He slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really bringing out my HC of Jigen being a bitter and stubborn baby boomer here. I've also always been of the mind that Fujiko is a more logic-minded, tough love sort of person. 
> 
> I also would like to note that ciprofloxacin actually can come as a liquid, contrary to what Fujiko says. I just couldn't think of a more appropriate common antibiotic to use. Take it from someone who works at a doctor's office but isn't medically trained.
> 
> Regardless, thank you all for the wonderfully kind comments and kudos. I can't express how much I appreciate them <3


End file.
